Welcome to the first ever TEDxUppsalaUniversity

On September 21st 2013 the inaugural TEDxUppsalaUniversity will come to Uppsala. TED and TEDx are highly successful world-wide concepts that allow the greatest minds and best speakers to present their ideas in a creative and audience friendly way by delivering inspirational talks of maximum 18 minutes.

The idea to host a TEDx event was originally developed by a group of Sustainable Development master students at Uppsala University.

“TED is an incredible format for making new, innovative ideas accessible to the public, and we are very excited to organize a TEDx conference in an outstanding university city like Uppsala. With our event we want to provide a forum for interesting ideas as well as engage and inspire people around our theme of ‘Resilience’” says project manager and student Helena Hedström.

Where & when: The centrally located concert and congress hall (Uppsala Konsert & Kongress, Vaksala Torg 1, Uppsala, Sweden 75375, Hall C (Sal C)).

Date & time: September 21st 2013, 13:00 - 18:00. 

Theme:  The theme of TEDxUppsalaUniversity is Resilience. Today’s societal challenges are global, interdependent, and increasingly complex. They require systems, societies, and individuals to be able to respond with greater flexibility, and creativity. In the face of so many challenges, how resilient are we really?

Speakers: Our impressive and diverse list of speakers will approach the subject of resilience from a wide range of angles.
 
●   Walid Al-Saqaf, a self-identified Yemeni activist, will give a talk on “Rising to the occasion and fighting for your ideals; overcoming life’s difficulties through resilience”.
●   Filippa Bergin, who describes herself as a sustainability expert who believes in the future, will talk about resilience as a new description of the economic world.
●   Sven Heijbel, filmmaker and entrepreneur, will deliver a talk about how personal happiness is dependent on a resilient attitude.
●   Anders Wijkman and Johan Rockström, Swedish opinion leaders, preliminarily confirmed their attendance and talks on their newly published book “Bankrupting Nature.”
●   Further speakers will continually be announced closer to the event date.

Moderator: TEDxUppsalaUniversity will be moderated by Ruben Brunsveld, Managing Director of the Stockholm Institute for Public Speaking (StIPS). His style of moderation is interactive, direct, and sometimes confrontational.

Press contact: Helena Hedström, curator, e-mail: helena@tedxuppsalauniversity.com ph: + 46 702 933049

Background information: TEDxUppsalaUniversity will be a public event with an on-site audience of 120 attendees and wider public participation via our live webcast URL. 

Ticket application opens this week and tickets are 100 SEK. The event is supported by StIPS and Södra Tornet.

To keep up to date and/or get in touch with TEDxUppsalaUniversity and our team of organizers, check out our webpage, like our Facebook page, and follow us on Twitter.

About TEDx: In the spirit of "ideas worth spreading," TED has created TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxUppsalaUniversity, where x = independently organized TED event. At TEDxUppsalaUniversity, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.
 
About TED: TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a conference in California 26 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with many initiatives.

At a TED conference, the world's leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes or less. TED speakers have included Roger Ebert, Sheryl Sandberg, Bill Gates, Elizabeth Gilbert, Benoit Mandelbrot, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Brian Greene, Isabel Allende and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Three major TED events are held each year: The TED Conference takes place every spring in Vancouver, Canada, simultaneous with TEDActive, in Whistler, BC; and the TEDGlobal Conference takes place each summer in Edinburgh, Scotland.

On TED.com, talks from TED conferences are shared with the world for free as TED Talks videos. A new TED Talk is posted every weekday. Through the Open Translation Project, TED Talks are subtitled by volunteers worldwide into more than 90 languages. Through our distribution networks, TED Talks are shared on TV, radio, Netflix and many websites.

The TEDx initiative grants free licenses to people around the world to organize TED-style events in their communities with TED Talks and live speakers. More than 5,000 TEDx events have been held, and selected talks from these events are also turned into TED Talks videos.

The annual TED Prize grants $1 million to an exceptional individual with a wish to change the world. The TED Fellows program helps world-changing innovators from around the globe to become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities. TED-Ed creates short video lessons by pairing master teachers with animators, for use in classroom instruction or independent learning.